Active floor supervision enables managers to enhance performance in the distribution center in 3 key ways. Be sure to walk the floor regularly to stay abreast of problems.
It helps to recognize which employees may need more training by having regular presence on management on the floor. These regular visits can be used to see who may be the next to be promoted to a supervisory position; it shows you consider the floor and everything that happens there and the workers to be essential to the overall operation and extremely vital; lastly, you can deal with problems as they occur.
Determine the Utilization of Space: Begin by checking cube utilization in your facility. Inspect if there is much empty space near the ceiling. Implementing narrower aisles and higher racks and certain forklifts that work in those kinds of settings could greatly increase how you move and store materials. What may not seem like much wasted area could mean thousands of square feet and extra dollars with a few adjustments.
Check for Obsolete Inventory: Like for instance, if a stock-keeping unit or SKU has not moved in more than a year, then it is considered to be consuming valuable space. As well, if you have lots of half-full pallets stored or staged in aisles, you are also not utilizing available space to its full potential. By doing an inventory overhaul and re-organizing existing stock, a lot of room could be made to accommodate things which are moving faster.
How is the Product Flow? Check to see if the product flow is both sequential and logical, by making the time to trace how exactly product flows in your facility regularly. Around 60% of direct labor within the warehouse is allotted to traveling from one place to another. You can potentially have less staff finishing the same amount of work by being aware of product flow. Being able to move personnel to complete other jobs rather than having personnel doubled up transporting items would get more work out of the same amount of employees.
Review how the order filling procedure is happening. If you notice that a variety of SKUs are mixed-up in one place and orders do not require objects of this mix, pickers are wasting time. Another big waste of time is having the same SKU situated in many locations within the warehouse. Get the employees used of going to a specific place for each specific thing so that they are simply looking in one place and not traveling all over the warehouse checking more than one place for the same item. These small changes can vastly improve the overall effectiveness in your warehouse.